jerkbait

http://www.joebucher.com/Articles/Article_Topraider.asp Here is the one I use. It has the T-Whacker tail and a keel weightd nose. Not the original but an example. Jerkbait

Yard sale or your inlaws garage. I found that after I bought one, that I could find them from old gas grills. Peple dont know what to do with them and they end up on a shelf somewhere. I was even looking at the wife's christmas ornamets. You know the deer whose heads move up and down? Patience will be key for me there. I actually have 2 plug turners now one for large and one for small baits. Good Luck Jerk!

Rotary files come in that size. Mcmaster-Carr has them. Let me know if you cant find one and I wll shoot you a link. Jerk

It has a lot to do with the size of bait and the type of wood. With softer woods like balsa and bass, it does ok. I agree that the rollers could have a sharper profile that would emboss deeper, however the idea is natural looking for taxidermy purposes. I did a pict last year, I will post if I can find it. The scales are backward but you get the idea. Iwas done over Basswood. Hope it helps Jerk

Welcome to the site Snook. These guys have forgotten more than some of us know! The advice given thus far is right on take it slow and dont hurry the job or you will ruin more than you might other wise. I found a count-down Rapal while diving Ginny Springs sp? 17 years ago and still have it in my box. Hey if you go to Stick Marsh look for my foiled crankbait in the northeast corner will you? And look out for that big ole gator! Man I used to lose a bunch of baits out in those lakes. Post a few pix. Jerk

Got out this weekend to swim some plugs and try a little Striper fishing. We found some working a shoreline at night and caught and released 8 Friday night. All came on our own plugs. My biggest came on a bait designed for New Rivere Smallies! The first time I threw it out I hooked one and it pulled off on the first run. Sat down in the boat and re-hhoked it (in the dark) and caught a beautiful 21lber that looked like it had a wtermellon in its gut. The next night I had one on my cedar musky crank which was great, because I always figured that stripers would eat it as well. My friend and fellow bait builder APB got several on his topwater swimmers and hooked up on a new design as well. Goota go make more! Jerk!

Spinner, the guys around here do it any number of ways. I personally use the router on bigger stuff and a drum sander in a drill press for small stuff. Belt sander is also handy for tapers. You can get very precise if you watch what you are doing. tapering the tails is aomething that I do a lot on med sized cranks. I made a flat plate with formica top that I bored a hole in the size of the drum. Clamp down and adjust your table to where the drum is just below the surface of the formica or other slick surface. Attach a shopvac below the table and you keep most of the dust going down into the vac. Hope it helps Bob

Mack-Z-Scaler in several sizes http://www.taxidermy.com/ under fish supplies Jerk

I would think you could find a good supply at Homies or SLowe's. I strip the coating off multi-strand wire. It lasts as long as the rubber I tie does. Rigging wire in saltwater tackle stores works well too but you may have someting around the house now. Just dont use lamp or speaker wire as the strands are too thin to put much pressure on the skirts. Jerk

I have been wanting to try this for some time so I got the tools together and gave it a shot. The bait is basswood sealed and foiled as normal. The scale pattern is an embossing tool from Wesco taxidermy and I just realized the scales might be on backward. Oh well it is the first try. The other details are made using leather tools; a scalloped border tool and a background veiner. Looks a lot like gills and fins to me. Hope you like it. I like having details without all the carving. Jerk

Steve, Lots of people carve cedar and basswood. I use them both and have had gool luck with screw eyes holding up well. They both can be carves with nearly any knife and sanded or shaped withy a file or wrasp. Both should be sealed with epoxy Devcon 2 ton or ETex prior to paint. Good Luck with the building Jerk!

Durhams would be a good choice as I have some from making molds. I think the original request was for a filler that would be hard to knock out. Most wood fillers are either brittle or softer than wood. One good bite or bounce or hook poke and the surface is compromised. The epoxy paste, if smoothed while setting, requires little to no sanding (good thing too) and is ready for paint in 5 minutes. Been using it on my musky gliders and cranks and the areas where I add weight are almost invisble. I will try the Durhams tonight and see how it does. Jerk

APB turned me on to a new filler that is working great for me. It is the plumbers epoxy product in a tube from sLowes or Home Depot. It is a putty like product with both parts together in a roll. You pinch a piece off and mix it between you fingers. Goes on like wood filler but sets up in a few minutes and is hard as nails. I take alcohol on my finger to smooth it out because it is real hard to sand. Filled with metal particles. Paints gret and is harder than the wood. Jerk!

Good point Riverman I fogot to mention that I thin the D2ton with a few cc of denatured alcohol, on a bait such as a bomber a thick coat could dampen the action. I also concur that no bait will last forever but a plastic bait can be refinished a good number of times even if it gets a small hole in it. I dont mind taking a great performing bait and just beating the paint right off it. Once it takes on some water, I let it dry out and refinish it. Jerk

I use Devcon 2ton for musky baits and feel that IMHO sealing the wood under the paint is of equal importance to topcoat. My best baits get beat up pretty good after a hlf dozen or so musky catches. The hooks and teeth take thir toll. The structural integrity of the bait is maintained under the paint and primer. I just repainted my best crank from last year and cleared it again. Good as new! Jerk!

Tempered stainless leader wire in .016 will work nicely as well. I have used multi-stranded 20# leader as well. If that doesnt work the music string is always a good choice, although I would use a G. Jerk!

I did say that I use 1/4" stuff a lot and basswood is my preferred topwater medium. AYC from APB's scrap bin is for the underwater stuff. He sends me some of his cutoffs that are from 1/8" to 3/16" alaskan Yellow Cedar. It is a great solid wood with lively action and great rot resistance. I use the 3/4" red cedar for my musky cranks and 3/4 white clear pine for gliders. I dont know why, I just do. Jerk!

Guys a real easy way of doing this is to lay the bait down flat on the bench next to a piece of wood ripped just under half of the thickenss of the original. Lay a 5mm mechanical pencil on top of the guage block and slide the body around tracing a line all the way. Then flip the bait and repeat. You should then have two thin lines a small distance apart that will give you a better reference for drill than a single line will. I use standard width blanks so it is easy to take an eighth inch guage block and shave a small amount off of it to guage with. It is the same idea as a machine block with the precision scriber you may remember from machine class (were we in the same class?). No math no measuring and if you do a bunch of the same thickness it is the quickest most reliably accurate way I have found. Jerk!

Dont care to make one but it is really easy to do yourself. Just built my fourth in about 2 hours. Where ar you located? Jerk

Great looking sunnies there Etch! Bob

Hey Etch. Cherry is a good working wood and is dense so little lead would be needed for weighting neutral. If you mean glider type jerkbaits, yeah it would be good. I have done a few in cherry and maple. They glide just fine. I have recently however started using lighter wood with more lead as it seems to me to be livelier in the water IMHO! By that I mean more belly wiggle and flash! Jerk!

The Chart crank is just like the ones I musky fish with only thinner. It swims to 2 feet with a wiiide wobble and good belly roll. They also make a nice twitch bait on the surface. The lip angle lets it roll and swim over cover real well in the flows I fish regularly. Hard to hang up. Havent tried to troll that one but the others in this same series track great. I put rattles in this bunch just to see if the stripers like them better. The shad patten is one I have worked on for a while now. It is a combination on 2 different meshes. I do a gray fog over top of body and then fog that with Blue chameleon. Put the small mesh on and spray light coat of white. Bigger mesh over small and shoot peal white. Ligth dust of silver down the back and it gives an interesting look. All paints are createx. Jerk

Here is a cross-section of the Buko crank in its newest form. I wanted a thinner profile, more shad like. The bottom one is standard shape and the top 2 are new style. They have 3 grams of lead between the front hook and lip. I tried a new lip in the top one to get a little more depth. It still thumps real hard but will get about 4'-6' with 15# line. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, they rattle. Brass tube installed in the tail sideways with shot inside and capped with hard plastic. They all swim great but have the hooks removed to send out to guys I am swapping with.

I use a maple board that is drilled with different size and depth holes for a mold and pour up a bunch of slugs for weighting. I dill holes from the bottom of the plug and switch around until I get the right float or sink rate. I then deepen the hole enough to jide the weight and epoxy in. Seal the sole however you like before seal and prime. Jerk

Very nice walley!